by Mocha Joe » Sun Jun 28, 2015 10:14 am
Awesome Japan have done a truly terrible job.
Firstly the campaign started at too low of a goal. If it had been, say, a 5m target, then we would have 5m+ raised right now. As soon as it hit 2m on the second day, all the urgency was gone. All the publicity was gone. The target had been reached and Shenmue III will be a reality. Yet a week later we find out that 10m is the real goal to aim towards, but who really cares other than us guys? Shenmue III is funded and the story is done and dusted for all the major press...
I'm not going to go into detail about all of the problems with the actual Kickstarter. We all know the video, poor rewards, lack of communication, lack of promotion, lack of description, lack of clarity regarding Sony's involvement etc. have held the project back massively. I actually had a decent level of optimism when I saw that they were doing a Reddit AMA and later a Twitch stream. 'Hey, they're actually promoting via relevant avenues!' I thought. But the AMA got off to a false start and the Twitch 'interview'...oh God...
And then when you realize that these guys, who are managing one of the biggest Kickstarters we're ever going to see, are taking the weekends off... Well all optimism has gone for the KS to reach a target we want. It is quite alarming how naive and incompetent they have been.
When we're sitting down to play Shenmue III and notice all those stretch goals we missed out on, all we'll be thinking is: "fuck you Awesome Japan."